Providing appropriately challenging gifted services nurtures a growth mindset in gifted and all students. When children only get work they’ve already mastered they cannot grow; targeted services meet academic, social, and emotional needs, encourage risk-taking and learning, and support students rather than exclude them.
This post explains how creativity is now seen as a brain-based process accessible to everyone. It offers seven practical techniques—mind-wandering, recording ideas, self-challenge, mindfulness, curiosity rewards, engaging with the arts, and limiting distractions—to strengthen creative thinking and daily problem-solving.
During a road trip while recovering from shoulder injuries, a mother observed her twice-exceptional son’s strengths as he navigated trails and supported her. The essay argues that strengths are context-driven, recommends strength-based parenting, and cites neuroscience evidence of brain plasticity to support nurturing children’s strengths.
Gifted children often carry heavy cognitive loads and need ongoing support with organization and executive functioning. Teachers and parents must collaboratively teach and model routines, planners, and tracking systems, reinforce them at home and school, and maintain accountability so students develop lasting skills for academic and life success.
Gifted learners need emotional health and supportive environments to thrive. Adults should provide choice, mentorship, social connection, and strategies for anxiety and perfectionism. Schools can use clubs, communication, collaboration, low-stakes projects, and daily reflection to build resilience and support gifted students’ well-being.
This brief summarizes Collins’ Culturally Responsive Multi-tiered System of Supports (CR-MTSS), a whole-child framework integrating cognitive, social-emotional and cultural supports to serve twice- and thrice-exceptional learners. It outlines tiered interventions, differentiated instruction, and systems-level components to promote equity and rigorous, culturally relevant learning.
This article explores how the COVID-19 pandemic shifted schooling to the home, urging families to establish routines, clear expectations, mentorship, supervision, and positivity. It offers practical tips for supporting children, managing technology use, fostering exercise and connection, and highlights historical creative achievements during quarantines.
Kate Bachtel argues that eco-literacy is essential to gifted development, urging educators to foster environmental connections, improve learning habitats, and address cultural climate. The essay highlights nature’s health benefits, sustainability practices, distributed leadership, and calls for moral responsibility to nurture ecosystems for youth and communities.
An educator recounts revising a fourth-grader’s IEP to recognize her twice-exceptional profile. By integrating accommodations with creative development and advanced math opportunities, the revised plan fostered the student’s strengths, improved reading outcomes, and established programs like a creative math club to support talent alongside remediation.
This article guides parents of gifted and twice-exceptional children in finding appropriate educational environments. It recommends asking targeted questions about identification, staff empathy, social-emotional support, curriculum and teaching approaches, and ensuring culturally competent assessment and ongoing staff development to meet each child’s unique needs.
